L
Leon Liu
AI Researcher & Developer • Prev MLE @ Jingo
📗 CS at UCLA building ML systems.
🏢 Shipped recommendation infrastructure at Jingo (AI startup) serving 5M products with RAG and vector search.
🔬 Fine-tuning diffusion models on GPU clusters for autonomous driving research at UCLA Zhou Lab (ICLR 2026 under review).
🌱 Side projects:
- 🐍 RL agents for Atari Surround
- ⌨️ Transformer EMG→QWERTY decoder for keyboardless typing from biosignals
- 📝 SaaS resume builder accessible editor → LaTeX/ATS-friendly PDF
- ... and more!
Experience
Machine Learning Engineer Intern
Jingo (AI-Native E-commerce Startup) • Machine Learning Engineer Intern
- Architected and built the core LLM-powered product search + recommendation service infra with FastAPI, Redis, and PostgreSQL (SQLAlchemy ORM), integrating RAG for user memory, vector search across a 5M+ product catalog
- Cut search initial p95 latency by ~50% by optimizing async orchestration with FastAPI workers and Redis caching, enabling real-time infinite scroll
- Productionized contextual rec engine combining graph-based user memory with context signals (geolocation, weather, Pinterest profile), plus an LLM-based query preprocessor that improved product recall and rec relevance in A/B tests
- Shipped web/deep research feature with look-aside cache using Perplexity Sonar API powering review/spec product comparisons across products while minimizing latency and amortizing API cost
- Designed an LLM-driven ETL pipeline that transformed messy product data into enriched embeddings and structured metadata, boosting product recall and recommendation relevance
Machine Learning
Backend Engineering
LLM
Vector Search
FastAPI
No preview available
🚧No full page available yet!🚧
Undergraduate Researcher
UCLA Bolei Zhou Lab • Undergraduate Researcher
- Engineered diffusion-based simulator-to-realistic scene generation models grounded in driving simulator physics
- Trained Flux and SD3 models across 8 L40S GPUs using PyTorch w/ DeepSpeed and SLURM, improving training throughput (2x batch sizes)
- Trained adapter layers for simulator-conditioned diffusion models to improve realism in driving scene generation (ICLR 2026 under review)
Gen AI
Diffusion
Simulation
PyTorch
DeepSpeed
No preview available
🚧No full page available yet!🚧
Software Engineer Intern
UCLA Bionics Lab • Software Engineer Intern
- Trained LSTM achieving >90% accuracy for automating stroke rehabilitation assessments
- Developed data pipelines integrating MediaPipe-based 3D triangulation, doubling clinical data processing throughput
Machine Learning
Computer Vision
Healthcare
PyTorch
No preview available
🚧No full page available yet!🚧
Projects
Prolio — Resume Versioning App
- Designed and deployed a full-stack SaaS resume platform with modular editing, multiple versions, Gemini LLM-powered reviews, and PWA client (Next.js, React, Tailwind, shadcn)
- Engineered microservice backend (Flask, PostgreSQL, Redis, Celery, GCP) with async LaTeX/PDF compilation and secure OAuth authentication
- Productionized infra with Docker, GitHub Actions, and GCP Cloud Build, enabling CI/CD and scaling
Next.js
React
Flask
PostgreSQL
Redis
GCP
Docker
OAuth
Full Stack
SaaS
CI/CD
LaTeX
No preview available
🚧No full page available yet!🚧
emg2qwerty — sEMG-to-QWERTY AI Text Decoding
- Trained Transformer sequence-to-sequence models to decode wrist-worn EMG signals into typed QWERTY text, enabling hands-free typing from biosignals
- Outperformed Meta's published ConvNet baseline by ~10% lower character error rate through Transformer and RNN fine-tuning
- Developed full training pipeline with preprocessing (log spectrograms, augmentation), CTCLoss optimization, and benchmark evaluation across GRU, LSTM, and Transformer architectures
- Increased training throughput by 2.5x via spectrogram down-sampling (125Hz→50Hz) with negligible accuracy loss, enabling faster experimentation
PyTorch
PyTorch Lightning
Transformers
Python
Machine Learning
Signal Processing
Transformers
PyTorch
No preview available
🚧No full page available yet!🚧
Lingsim — AI-Powered Language Learning App
- Built multilingual AI tutoring full-stack app integrating speech recognition (Whisper) + GPT-4 dialogue + ElevenLabs TTS to enable real-time conversational practice
- Demonstrated sub-second (~500 ms) speech→text→response→speech loop across ~10 languages, showcasing feasibility of real-time interactive AI tutors
- Designed end-to-end system with Next.js, React, Firebase, and REST APIs to support secure authentication and optimized low-latency chat
Next.js
React
Firebase
TypeScript
GPT-4
Whisper
Full Stack
AI/ML
EdTech
Chat
Speech Recognition
TTS
No preview available
🚧No full page available yet!🚧
Reliable Transport Layer (TCP over UDP)
- Built a custom transport protocol in C providing reliable, ordered delivery on top of UDP by adding packet retransmission, acknowledgments, and error detection
- Validated correctness with stress tests simulating dropped/out-of-order packets, demonstrating consistent end-to-end data integrity
C
Networking
Networking
Systems Programming
C
No preview available
🚧No full page available yet!🚧
Basilisk — Multi-Agent Social Deduction Simulator
- Developed framework to simulate and manage social deduction games with both human players and LLM-based agents
- Integrated LangChain and Ollama/Gemini APIs for multi-agent orchestration, dialogue, and strategy execution
- Implemented structured input/response validation with Pydantic, ensuring reliable agent interactions and reproducibility
- Built orchestration layer for game-state tracking, rule enforcement, and cross-agent coordination in Python
Python
LangChain
Pydantic
Gemini
Ollama
LLM
Multi-Agent Systems
Game AI
No preview available
🚧No full page available yet!🚧
Finduo — Full-Stack Gaming Social Media Web App
- Designed and implemented full-stack social media platform for users to find gaming partners
- Implemented user profiles, dynamic feed, search capabilities, and viewing friend invites with React
- Implemented RESTful API for auth, user profiles, ratings, and friends list in the backend with MongoDB, Express, Node.js
MongoDB
Express
React
Node.js
TypeScript
Full Stack
Social Media
Gaming
No preview available
🚧No full page available yet!🚧
Dynamic Analysis of Cryptographic API Misuse in Node.js
- Paper accepted at IEEE MIT URTC
- Implemented multipart system to perform dynamic analysis on Node.js codebases to detect vulnerabilities from API misuse
- Implemented custom module loader that instrumented code to log API usage
- Developed rule enforcer to detect API misuse defined by a modular set of declarative rules
Node.js
TypeScript
Bash
Security
Dynamic Analysis
Research
No preview available
🚧No full page available yet!🚧
Unity Real-Time Strategy PVP Game
- Engineered robust game systems and mechanics, leveraging data structures to optimize performance
- Architected and implemented modular scripts and game systems with Object-Oriented Programming
- Utilized Unity Profiler for game performance tuning and software testing
- Enhanced user experience by identifying and resolving performance bottlenecks
C#
Unity
Game Development
C#
Real-time Systems
Object-Oriented Programming
No preview available
🚧No full page available yet!🚧
Brewin Interpreter
- Implemented an interpreter in Python for a custom language "Brewin"
- Designed interpreter for several variations of the language with common features
- Handled function calls, recursion, scoping, variables, control flow (conditionals and loops)
- Built systems for dynamic and statically-typed variations, structs, error handling, lazy evaluation
Python
Programming Languages
Interpreters
Compilers
No preview available
🚧No full page available yet!🚧
Reverse Proxy for ACM Cyber
- Implemented a reverse proxy with HTTP request parsing, authentication (bcrypt), and structured logging to securely route and monitor backend traffic
- Designed and tested routing, auth, and logging subsystems to improve reliability and observability in multi-service environments
TypeScript
Deno
Networking
Backend
Security
No preview available
🚧No full page available yet!🚧
Atari Reinforcement Learning
- Implemented policy gradient methods and deep Q learning for a reinforcement learning agent in Atari
- Trained agent to solve and beat the Atari Surround environment
- Spearheaded and taught a quarter-long workshop for ACM AI for 60+ members
Python
PyTorch
PyTorch Lightning
Reinforcement Learning
PyTorch
Python
No preview available
🚧No full page available yet!🚧